Activity 5 – Working group

Activity 5 – Establishment of a working group and development of a Strategy proposal

Expected result: A working group made up of experts within NCCD, CoE representatives involved in the project, one or two representatives appointed in mutual agreement with NGO’s active in the field representative at national level, but also specialists in certain fields important in the application of the Strategy (sociologists, academics)

Expected value: National Strategy for preventing and combating discrimination for the period 2015-2020

Presentation:

A. Preliminary Meetings

Under this specific activity, it took place a series of preliminary meetings in order to determine the priorities for the course of action and identify manner of working, meetings attended by representatives of civil society, of the relevant public institutions in the field of anti-discrimination and of the Council of Europe, the NCCD's project partner.

These meetings were held successively at the headquarters of the National Council for Combating Discrimination in December 18, 2015, respectively January 9, January 15 and January 22, 2015.

During this preliminary meetings it was agreed that the National Council for Combating Discrimination will develop a draft, using the course of action and the areas identified as priorities, as health, employment services, the right to dignity, education, housing, and then the draft wIll be filled with the suggestions and recommendations obtained during thematic working groups, summarising the best ideas, based on a common structure, targetting:

Transversal principles:

Institutional and normative empowerment in the equality field

Internalization of equality and non-discrimination values

Training (initial and ongoing)

The gathering of disaggregated data

Information, promotion, communication

Strategic Priorities for preventing and combating discrimination:

The presentation of the fact / Diagnosis

Applying the transversal principles

Sectoral debate / Specific objectives

Types of actions / Interventions

Institutional roles, including responsibility

Benchmarking / Success indicators

Financial calculation / budget.

Information was gathered either through the working groups which the Council organized at its Headquarters, under the project, either through electronic correspondence with interested stakeholders.

B. Working meetings on the areas identified as priorities

The first meeting of this kind was held on 17 of February 2015, having on the agenda the right to dignity and hate speech; the second meeting of the working group took place on March 5th, 2015, with the theme of education; in March 10, 2015, a work session was convened in order to discuss housing and infrastructure; in May 14, 2015, it was held the last meeting of the working group on the topic „strengthening the institutional capacity of the institution of equality - National Council for Combating Discrimination”.

C. Support Meetings

A contribution was also received from civil society, through the medium of Antidiscrimination Coalition, who took initiative to support the process of drafting the the new strategic document, by participating more actively in the consultation process.

Thus, within this collaboration, several meetings took place that focused on the areas of health (February 4, 2015), services (March 5th, 2015) and employment (March 11, 2015), which were attended by members of the project’s implementation team to ensure continuity and congruence of activities.

The conclusions of these meetings and online consultations will be corroborated with the recommendations from the external assesment of the former strategy, made by experts employed by the Council of Europe, and as well with those obtained in the regional round tables organized by CNCD.

The draft of the strategic document will be reviewed by CoE experts, and then submitted to public debate before finalizing the negotiation with the romanian government.